Answer
by MouseMaster42
Summary: A conversation between Mello and Matt immediately before they leave to kidnap Takada. A short fic providing some closure for their deaths. Rated M only because the f-bomb is spoken by both parties.


__**SPOILERS FOR CHAPTER 104 AND EPISODE 35**

**This is probably going to be the only Death Note fanfiction I do. I finished reading the series for the second time and really latched onto Mello and Matt, even though I knew they were going to die. I needed to vent, so I wrote this to give myself closure. A friend of mind read it and essentially screamed at me that it was decent, so I thought "what the heck." And here you go. For the sake of the flow, I changed a few things. I think it's still pretty true to the story. Anyway, it accomplished that it was meant to accomplish, and I would like it if it gave you readers some closure as well. Please read, enjoy, and review.**

**Disclaimer: Death Note and all of its related characters do not belong to me. (Also, for people who got my author alert for something else, I got distracted by a man with goggles. I'm very sorry.)**

**xXx**

**Answer**

_"Then I guess I'm going to have to do it." _-Mello (Chapter 104)

**xXx**

Shaking fingers dialed a well-remembered number, a trembling hand held the phone up to a tattered ear. A man waited in a darkened room for the voice that he wanted to hear.

There was a click as the phone was picked up on the other end. The recipient of the call would be miles away, probably farther. He could feel the distance between him and the other like a physical thing. Normally, he was barely aware of the other's presence, even when they were working in close quarters, but now…

"What's up?"

And just like that, there was no distance. It was okay. It would all be okay.

He took a long, shuddering breath, trying to ignore how all of the pieces seemed to be falling into place so nicely. If he could just ignore what he had to do for a few more minutes, that would be enough. Just a few minutes, and then he would say what had to be said.

"How are you?" he asked, surprised at the steadiness of his own voice. Excellent. It would all be okay.

"…Fine…?" the other was obviously confused. Righteously so. "What's up?"

"Can't I just check in on you without you worrying that there's a crisis going on?" he tried to laugh, but the noise caught in his throat. "Come on, Matt, am I seriously that much of a workaholic?"

The boy on the other end of the phone sighed, and he could just picture Matt running a hand through his hair or adjusting those goggles that he was so fond of. How long had it been since they had actually come into contact with one another? Funny—they used to share a room, and now they barely saw one another. There was some irony there.

"So are you really okay? Is something going on?"

He should have said something. He should have used that segue, hopefully thrown out by the other in the hopes that he would confide in him, to turn to the matter at hand. That_ important _matter at hand. It would have been so easy to say something, to accept the hand that was being offered to him. Matt would listen. He had always listened.

"Remember back at Whammy's?" he found himself saying instead, the phone nearly slipping from his sweaty fingers. "When L talked to us? …That time when L talked to us for the first time, do you remember that, Matt?" There was an edge of desperation in his voice. There was a need to confirm that his life had really happened, that something really had been accomplished. He needed this insignificant boy to confirm that they really had those quiet years together.

"Course I do," Matt replied. "Man, what's up? It's not like you to talk about the house like this."

"I was just thinking," he said softly. "About what would have happened if we had never left."

There was a long silence, and for the first time ever he honestly couldn't hear the sound of a videogame or a keyboard clacking in the background of the phone call.

After that long moment, Matt spoke up, his voice solemn. "You and Near never spoke that day, did you?"

"…No, we didn't."

"Everybody else was crowding around the screen," the younger man went on, almost eagerly, as if he was experiencing that same need to speak about the events that had passed. "We were all asking questions, demanding what L's secret was, and how we could grow up to be just like them…" He trailed off for a minute, but spoke again before a word could be inserted edgewise. "But you and Near just stood there, listening." His voice took on a mournful edge and quieted. "…It's funny, but it's almost like you guys knew that L would fail someday. Me, I never thought that. …As a kid, I thought L was invincible…" There was a creak, and he assumed that Matt was squeezing the phone. He assumed this was the case because his own hand had been clenched almost unbearably tight since he brought up the subject of L. The world's greatest detective. But he had failed.

He had died.

He had lost. And lost to a simple murderer, at that.

So why did he ever think_ he_ even had a chance?

"…We had fun there, didn't we?" he asked in a whisper. "At Whammy's?"

"We did," Matt replied. "…Those were the best years of my life, you know. Hanging out with you, cramming the books, believing that one day we'd be the next L. …It was great."

"Wasn't it?"

There was another silence, and he spent it immersing himself in those quiet, kind memories of afternoons spent in vast libraries and nights spent laughing at jokes whispered across a dark bedroom. Those days had been peaceful and beautiful, full of potential and promises.

All for this.

All for this one moment.

He had to say it.

"I will never—" he started, but it was too hard, and the last syllable threatened to warp itself into—of all things—a sob.

"You will never what?" Matt asked, concern clear even in his voice.

"I will never…" he tried again, forcing out the words that he realized he had known all along, but had forced himself never to think about. "I will never be L, Matt."

There was a sharp intake of breath from the other end, and again, he could just picture Matt's shoulders tightening and his slim body rearing away from the phone for a minute as he took in those simple, shattering words.

"What do you mean?" Matt exclaimed, his voice hitched and uncertain. "Are you giving up? You can't do that! YOU CAN'T DO THAT! Mihael, if you give up, then Near will—!"

"_I KNOW!_" he screamed. "…Fuck it, Jeeves. I know."

There was a horrible silence. There were no happy memories now. There were no libraries, or promises, because everything was pointless. Everything was broken.

"…Well…" Matt said quietly, and it was obvious that he was on the verge of tears. "I just…I…I just wan—…Well, fuck."

"Yeah," he said. "I know."

"You've always known?"

"…Yeah."

"…._Fuck_."

He swallowed hard, listening to the quiet, embarrassed crying of the man on the other end. He covered the microphone with a hand and allowed himself one sharp sob before shoving all of the emotions into a mental box. He had to be empty. Emotion was his greatest undoing—hadn't Near pointed that out to him enough?

There were still things that needed doing.

"Matt?" he croaked. "Are you still there?"

There was a sniffle, a cough, and then a steady voice: "Yes. I'm here."

"Okay. You've got to listen to me, alright? Are you going to listen to me?"

"Of course I'll listen." The voice was sullen now. "What, you think I'm gonna ditch you the first time you seem uncertain? What sort of fucking friend would I be if that I did that?"

Mihael Keehl laughed, the sound surprisingly free and unrestrained. "You're a great guy, Matt."

He would have assumed that Matt was rolling his eyes, was he not able to hear the sound of a nose being blown through the speaker.

"I'm not—" Matt rasped, and then cleared his throat and tried again. "Look, I won't say it again. What's up? What do you need me to do?"

"Okay, listen," he said. "Near's got a plan, but it's flawed. We don't have time to create a plan of our own, but I've got something that will fix the issue in his plan. If we do this, then we should catch Kira."

"Great," Matt said dully. "That's what we want, isn't it?"

"Problem is, it doesn't exactly have a high success rate." He braced himself for what needed to be said. He took a deep breath, and forced his hand to relax its grip on the phone. It was surprisingly easy. Perhaps he had gotten everything he needed to out of his system. "…Actually, it has a very high success rate. But the survival rate is low."

"That's okay, we've been in tight jams before," Matt said, a spark of enthusiasm coming into his voice.

"_Really_ low, Jeeves."

"…Oh."

He took another two breaths, marveling at how calm he suddenly was. It was over. He recognized it as being over from the moment he had acknowledged that he—alone—would never surpass L. There really shouldn't be any point to things anymore.

But there was, somewhere. He could still accomplish something.

Where L had failed, Mello and Matt could accomplish something that nobody else could.

"What do you think?" he asked. "I completely understand if you want out. With your talents, you could disappear. You could be free of all this. You could live to be an old man, Jeeves."

"With _our_ talents," Matt corrected softly. "With our talents, _we_ could disappear. _We _could be free of all this. We could let Near and the world rot and live to be old men together, couldn't we?"

"Yeah…we could."

A moment of silence.

"He wouldn't have wanted it," Matt said.

"No, he wouldn't have."

Another silence.

"Do you still have that old Chevy?"

"Yeah."

"And that smoke gun?"

"Yep."

"…Then let's get moving. We don't have much time."

**xXx**

**"Answer" is the title of chapter 104, where you find out that Mello may have known he was going to die. From the way it's written, I don't think Matt knew, but I wrote it that way anyway. My friend thinks it should have been called "Yes," but I stuck with Answer. **

**Anyway, I got really attached to these two characters this time through. I hope I did an okay job of portraying them. This is outside my normal genre (would you believe me if I said I generally wrote humor?), so I don't really know if it turned out well. I am happy with it, but I'd appreciate what you all have to say. **

**Please review. Constructive criticism is good. :)**


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